Barbara awoke the next morning in a cold, empty bed. After a brief
search, she found her husband asleep on the sofa with their cat, Bytes, and
a “Love the Librarian” mug balanced on his stomach. The cat’s nose was
nestled inside the mug, and Barbara guessed she had finished whatever hot
milk had remained there. She took the mug delicately from Dick’s
fingers and then tussled his hair.

“I can explain!” he gasped, scaring the cat, who promptly decided his
left shoulder provided the quickest way off the couch and swiftly used it as
an escape ramp. Dick’s eyes darted around, fell on Barbara’s amused
smile, and he relaxed. “Nightmares,” he explained.

“Would have been my guess,” Barbara answered, waving the mug. “Want
to talk about it?”

“Well, Bruce came back. It was like: you know those old Kaufman and
Hart plays with all the lunatics and crazy eccentrics running around in
different subplots? It all builds to this explosion of absolute chaos at the
end of Act II, just when the bank examiner, the cops, or the stodgy future
in-laws walk through the door.”

Barbara chuckled. “Dick, you’re doing a wonderful job managing the
team,” she assured him. “You really don’t need to be worrying what
Bruce is going to say when he gets back.”

“Azrael and Jean Paul were fighting a duel over Cassie, Tim had been
greened or hatted or something and was running around to all the rogues
taking orders for ice cream deliveries, Whiskers and Nutmeg were stuck in
the case with Jason’s old costume, Nigma comes in wearing a chef’s hat
asking where Alfred keeps the muffin pans, Bruce looks over the whole thing,
glares at me, and asks why the giant penny is sitting in the driveway.”

With effort, Barbara kept her light chuckle from erupting into a full
belly laugh.

“Nuzzle Puff!” Dick gasped, sitting up in bed with a start. His
heart was pounding and he’d twisted the bedsheet into a tight coil, but
apart from those details, everything was fine. The bed next to him was
empty, though; Barbara must already be up.

He found her in the living room, a book in her lap that she couldn’t read
because Bytes was curled in it. She was petting the cat sadly, and
looked up at him.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said simply.

Dick’s eyes narrowed.

“Because of her,” he growled disapprovingly.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Barbara answered, turning her chair and
wheeling towards the kitchen.

Dick followed, undeterred.

“Babs, I know you had words with Black Canary last night. Son of
great detective, remember; remember who trained me? Com was tied up
right around midnight, and after that you sounded funny. Preoccupied,
like something was bothering you. Now you want to tell me what
happened or let it stew?”

“I gave her an out of town assignment, that’s all,” Barbara declared,
spooning cat food into Bytes’s bowl.

“And?” Dick prompted.

“And nothing. She complained about it. She always complains
now, about everything.”

Dick’s eyes darkened into a Bat-like interrogation glare.

“Everybody complains. Tim grumbles about extended patrols, and Cass gets
that defiant little head-tilt, Jean Paul evidently squabbles with Az, and
Helena probably curses under her breath. You tap your fingernail on
the wristrest when Bruce does something you don’t like. Heck, even
Alfred probably has some secret butlerish form of protest, like not putting
a doily under the dinner rolls or something.”

“And what do you do?” Barbara smiled.

“Make jokes mostly,” Dick admitted. “Point is, everybody grumbles
about work, Barbara, but not everybody upsets you to where you’re losing
sleep over it. Tell me what happened on the Com last night; what did
the bitch do now?”

Jean Paul awoke in a cold sweat.

“Az?” he called out, forgetting he
didn’t need to speak to the angel out loud. “Az, where are you and
what are you doing?”

Go back to sleep, Mortal. You have not
rested long enough to restore your human faculties.

“Azrael, we’ve talked about the
dreams. You don’t sleep. You don’t dream. Whatever you do
to pass the time while I sleep tends to come out in my dreams.
I’ve gotten used to the sword fights clanking away back there while I’m in a
rowboat trying to ask Sally Fellingbrook to the prom. I got used to the one
sitting in the lecture hall at MIT, realizing I’m in my underwear, and then
when Professor Whitman tells me to stand and complete the equation on the
board, hearing you booming about “a swift stroke of Divine Flame to purge
the heresy from your soul!” I’ve even adjusted to the one where I’m
stuck in that hole at the back of the Batcave, like Winnie the Pooh with
Batman and Nightwing, Robin and the rest of them underneath all pulling on
my legs, Bane and half the rogues in Gotham above ground pulling on my arms,
and what are you doing, Az? You’re stepping through “The Devotion to the
Most Glorious St. Dumas by Way of the Sword.” But I’m used to it, all
of it. But this? This was—this was—kinky! This was
perverse! Huntress and the arrow and the sword and the purple teddy,
with the wind blowing up the, y’know. And Catwoman and Charlotte—Was
that Nightwing with Charlotte from Sex and the City? Az, this
whole thing has gotten completely out of hand.”

Calm yourself, Mortal. Human
dreams are a necessary—

“It’s out of control, Az. This whole thing. We’ve got to
settle it. It’s that simple.”

Dinah Lance had never been a superstar in the kitchen, but she liked
baking. Cooking a meal was drudgery, but baking something simple, like
scones from a mix, that was something she always enjoyed, a wonderful way to
relax after a rough case. When they were together, Ollie was the
serious cook, almost as impressive in the kitchen as he was in the field. He
introduced her to the relaxing properties of the kitchen. They used to do it
all the time, him making a complex chicken carciofi while she cut up
potatoes, he’d splash some wine over the chicken and offer her a taste, pull
her in when she reached for the bottle, say “Not so fast, Pretty Bird” and
kiss her with the sweet tang of chardonnay clinging to his moustache.

It wasn’t the same now, of course, cooking on her own. But it had
become a habit, a way to decompress after a rough case.

And this had been a rough case.
Internet porn, for godsake! At first, she thought it was a joke, and
not ha-ha funny but
how-ridiculously-psychotically-Brucelike-vindictive-was-everybody-going-to-get
funny. She’d blown up at Barbara when she got the assignment: It was
bad enough that they sent her out of town as much as they could and had
Batgirl keeping tabs on her whenever they couldn’t. She was a member
of the Justice League, how dare they, how dare they presume to send
that little girl to tail her like she was some kind of witless CRIMINAL!
And NOW, now the great cyber-goddess Oracle had come up with a new cheap,
petty way to insult her—let’s send her to Canada to investigate Internet
porn. Ha-ha-ha, Barbara, I’ll bet you and Dickie-the-dick were up all
night cooking this one up!

It was a childish outburst, a bitter and humiliating outburst, and Dinah
realized the moment the words left her lips that she’d lost control.
But rather than answer in kind, Oracle had only waited quietly until the
venom spent itself, and then she waited a moment longer—either collecting
herself, or else making sure Dinah had really finished.

..::We’ll obviously have some personal matters to discuss when this is
finished,::.. the crisp Oracle voice said calmly over the receiver.
..::Right now, a man named Waters, an architect and father of two living
in the suburbs outside Keystone, was sent an email by a coworker. The
email contained a link to a video on a website in which his daughter who ran
away a year ago last November was ‘appearing.’ He contacted INSIDER,
one of those TV news magazines, and they assigned one Harold Piskiter, an
investigative journalist, who tracked the website as far as a ‘data center’
in Canada and hasn’t been seen since. Now if the disappearance and
possibly the kidnapping or murder of a journalist is beneath Black Canary,
seeing as you’re a former member of the Justice League and all, then
I’ll give the assignment to someone else.::..

“No,” Canary answered abashed. “I’ll… take the case. Barbara
I-”

..::Good. Transmitting the details to your
com now. Oracle out.::..

Dinah paused her recollections to test the consistency of the scone
batter. It seemed a little sticky, which was how she liked it.
She loaded a healthy dollop onto the fork and dropped it onto the waiting
baking sheet.

“Who do you think you are?” a voice graveled accusingly from the window.

Dinah slammed down her spoon angrily. “Don’t come into my home
uninvited, okay, Dick? And don’t stand there talking to me like I’m
some criminal you’ve rousted or—”

Something stopped her from speaking.
Her voice simply seized, mid-word, and not from any telepathic pulse or
mystical stripping of powers, but from a look. A look of such
loathing and disgust, a look of absolute primal hatred. Nightwing
pointed to his temple.

“See this, this is a mask,” he said
gruffly, “Mask on, it’s Nightwing. It’s business; it’s not personal.
If I decide to be personal in my dealings with you, I take off the mask, and
then you can call me Dick. That’s the kind of distinction and respect
I was taught, because I was taught how to live in this life, taught
by the best. Taught by a man of honor and integrity, a man you
betrayed.”

Again Dinah tried to speak, but found her voice was utterly frozen.

“Just like that cheating Ollie of yours. No loyalty. Not a
thought to the good thing you were wrecking or the good people you hurt.”

No longer in her kitchen, Dinah found herself back at the old satellite
Watchtower, the Oracle hologram hovering before her.

“So Ollie cheated on you,” Barbara’s
voice said mockingly. “You don’t deserve any better, Dinah.
You’re a coward. You were a weak, miserable coward when you didn’t
take a stand on Dr. Light. You were a weak, miserable coward when you
attacked Bruce, when he did what you wouldn’t. You’ve been a
weak, miserable coward every day since, pretending. Hiding from
yourself what a corrupt, deceitful coward you really are…”

Dinah found her voice at last, erupting into a fierce, uncontrolled
canary cry that echoed off every surface in the satellite as the whole
structure began to shake uncontrollably. Only the Oracle hologram
remained still and stable, as computer consoles sparked and bits of support
beams fell from above.

“Taught by a man of honor and
integrity,” Nightwing’s voice repeated in a deep, ominous voice not
overwhelmed by her canary cry. “A man none of you are good enough to
serve with, no matter what kind of powers you have.”

On the word ‘powers,’ Dinah felt her cry fall back into her throat,
choking her. Her chest heaved, and she found herself bolting upright
in bed, the ‘canary cry’ sensation in her throat transformed into a tense
ball of nausea. She raced to the bathroom, heaved a few times, and
then made her way, weak-kneed back to the bed. She sat for maybe a
minute in a daze of cold-sweat and self-loathing. Then she took a deep
breath, stood, and got dressed.

Azrael located Huntress staking out a Goth club in the East Village.

There she is, Mortal,he said stoically. But
I warn you again, this plan is not sound.

No, no it’s not, Jean Paul agreed. She’s going to think I’m
the freakiest psycho she ever made the mistake of having coffee with, and
I’ll never hear from her again.

Then why are you resigned to this course of
action, knowing it is doomed to fail?

Nightwing, that’s why. Nightwing
and Catwoman. Assured mutual destruction, Az, that’s where we
are now, thanks to you and your Nightwing-slept-with-Huntress maneuverings.
If I think of Catwoman while I’m with Helena, you’ll produce thoughts of
Nightwing’s lips touching Helena’s—ew, oh, my eyes, don’t even go there,
damnit, Azrael. And that’s it; if that happens, we’re both out of the
game. She’s gonna be laying there all by herself, and if you think the
bat clan can hold a grudge over something like a mindwipe—ha.”

I fail to grasp the analogy, Mortal.

Assured mutual destruction, Az; like Tic-Tac-Toe and Global
Thermonuclear War, the only winning move is not to play.

I concede that something of a stalemate has
been reached. Nevertheless, asking the lady to ‘choose’ seems to be a
flawed course of action.

Yeah. Yeah it is, Az. Because we’re going to have to tell her
the whole thing: the Order of Dumas, the System… Right now, she thinks I’m a
guy in a mask who can kick butt. An hour from now she’s going to think
I’m Norman Bates.

…

Unless you’ve got a better idea, Az.

Mortal, as you well know, I am gifted with the
sum knowledge of the Order of St. Dumas. That wisdom, regrettably, is rather
spotty where women are concerned.

Something you might have considered before you stuck your nose into my
lovelife.

Such recriminations are pointless, Mortal. You should take it
as a mark of the lady’s charms that my interest was piqued as it was, and a
compliment to your own taste and judgment in choosing such a woman.

She is something, Jean Paul agreed. She quotes the
Godfather in bed, Az. That’s what we modern men call ‘a keeper.’

That was the part about ‘ leaving the sword’—

And bringing the cannoli, yeah. What a woman, huh?

Indeed.

Oliver Queen kicked the door angrily when it didn’t open far enough in
response to his furious pushing.

“What set you off?” she asked while he ushered her in and switched on the
lights.

“I taped the Rebels game,” he growled anew, “Going through hoops all
night to avoid hearing the score or any details. Last thing coming
home, I stopped to gas up the cycle, and this blasted Officer Chattybadge
spouts off the whole thing—lost in overtime—damn fascists.”

“Poor Ollie,” Dinah laughed, then as she went on, she segued into an
uncanny impersonation. “But since when you care about sports? I
thought they were all ‘a bunch of Neanderthals trying to prove their manhood
in grotesque displays of one-upsmanship, nothin’ but a
Who’s-Got-The-Bigger-Swinging-Johnson contest.’”

“They are,” he nodded crossly, although he was pleased she remembered his
bluster in such detail. “Besides which, free agency ruined the goddamn
game,” he added. “But I had a few dealings with one of the players
last year, Pellosovich, his son was kidnapped. Decent guy. Been
following a bit since then.

He looked her over again, annoyance forgotten.

“You’re still a slooow drink of whiskey, pretty lady.”

Dinah’s cheeks glowed. She felt better in those ten seconds than
she had in months.

“So how’s Gotham; want some wine?”

“Um, sure,” she said lightly. “Gotham’s, you know, the same.”

“Same as what, Berlin in the thirties?”

“Not exactly,” Dinah said softly.

Ollie looked up sharply. His remark was the norm; her reaction was
not. There was no smiling roll of the eyes, no dismissive smirk; there
was an undercurrent.

“What’s the fascist done now?” he asked, handing her a glass of
chardonnay. “Usual decrees about his city, or has he moved on to strip
searches and wiretapping.”

“No, it’s nothing,” she hedged. “And not Bruce.”

“’Nothing’ and ‘not Bruce’ are two
entirely different things,” he pointed out sagely. “’Nothing’ means
nothing is wrong in Gotham and you just came to see me because you missed
the incomparable Queen charm. ‘Not Bruce’ means there is
something wrong that doesn’t happen to involve Bruce this particular time
around.”

He affixed her with that lovely, loving gaze that told a woman she could
confide her innermost secrets to this sincere, caring soul. When he
spoke next, Dinah knew the voice would match the eyes, a tender, loving
caress.

“What happened?” he asked gently.

“It’s Barbara. Well, Dick too, but Barbara is the one that stings…”

She told the whole story, being sent
out of town so often since the mindwipe came out. Then this new case
she’d been given, internet porn, how she’d blown up at Barbara, how she’d…
she’d completely lost control of herself and screamed at Oracle like
a brat throwing a tantrum or some kind of raving psychopath.

“I’m disappointed in myself, Ollie. I’ve been running from it for
months and that was the last straw, it all came pouring out.”

“As well it should, damn Bats and his harping on the past. You’ve
every right to be pissed, Dinah.”

“Do I? It was a real case,
Ollie. TV news show had a guy investigating the porn; he followed a
lead to Canada and disappeared. Turns out he’s dead. It was a
real case, and I bit Barbara’s head off because I assumed it was a
punishment. Why do you think that was, Ollie? Why do you think
I’m expecting to be punished by the bat clan?”

He ran a hand gently through her hair. He looked at her critically
for a long moment, stroking her hair soothingly, but behind the tender
manner, wheels were turning and a debate raged.

“Which answer do you want, Dinah? You said you’ve been running from
it, well here it is, turn and face it: You never really know who you are in
this world until you have your illusions stripped away. Then you give
up, or you step up. It was a League decision and the League acted on
it. I happen to think they made the wrong choice, and so do you.
But that was the vote, and that’s what we did. And now you come here
with this story and ask why you’re expecting to be punished, and there are
two answers. Do you want to give up, or step up?”

“Step up,” she said decisively.

“Shit,” Ollie cursed.

Dinah raised an eyebrow.

“I hoped you’d say give up,” he said. “Give up answer is: ‘Because
they’ve all got sticks so far up their asses that they’re tasting wood.
If they can’t get past it and see all the good you’ve done, then screw’em.
Come back to Star City, where you’ll always have a home, you’ll always be
welcome, and you’ll always be accepted.’”

“I see,” Dinah said with a smile.

He refilled her glass.

“It is appealing,” she admitted.

He refilled his own.

“And if I came back, how long would it be before I found you in bed with
three groupies and a bottle of Stoli?”

“Stuck in the past, just like a Bat,” Ollie grumbled, emptying his glass
in a series of urgent gulps.

“What’s the step up answer, Oliver?”

“Remember Seattle?” he said musingly, “We’d get in around three, get
naked, put on the TV, channel 6 had those Murphy Brown reruns back to back
until six.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Remember the one where the distinguished older anchor had a laughing fit
on the air?”

“No, I don’t really remember the shows, Ollie. Just the quiet time,
cuddling ‘til dawn.”

“You should remember this one.
It’s important. Jim, the old anchor, has to report a news story that
Bush got a bee sting in his fat republican tuckus. Typical sitcom,
everybody else has their yuks when the story’s coming off the wire, but he
won’t. He thinks it’s undignified. So he goes on the air and
cackles like a hyena. Then he goes into hiding because he thinks
that’s the only thing people will remember about him, that one moment in his
long distinguished career. His friends eventually find him and talk
him out of it, because if he quits now, that is the only thing
anybody will remember. That’s why you’ve got to step up, Dinah.
You’ve done a lot of good in the Birds and in the League. You quit now
‘cause of this, then it’s gone. Cancelled out. This is all you
ever were.

“The give up answer is they
need to get over it. The step up answer is you do. You
haven’t really faced up to it ‘til now, Dinah. What we did, what it
means. Well, now it’s out there. No more illusions for anybody,
them or you. The question is if you can rebuild those relationships,
now, as this new person—that still looks like a slow drink of whiskey, by
the way.”

When Azrael first showed up, Huntress was glad of the company. She
explained how she learned of the Goth club from one of her students.
Several boys had new tattoos that were more disturbing than the usual stuff
meant to raise parental ire. She had nothing solid, no real evidence
of drugs or a gang or… or anything really, but something seemed wrong, so
she was keeping an eye on it.

Azrael spoke admiringly of her instincts, truly the greatest attribute
any crimefighter or crusader might possess, and not one that could be
learned either. While instinct could be improved through training and
experience, the raw ability was a gift of nature.

“Since it’s all surveillance at this point,” Jean Paul said pointedly,
“no fighting on the horizon or any other activity that relates to
crimefighting, I figured this would be a good time to talk.”

“Oh shit,” Helena hissed softly.

Within Jean Paul’s mind, Azrael pounced on the unfavorable reaction.

Listen well, Mortal, the lady has no interest in your declarations.
She undoubtedly wishes to focus all her energies on the righteous task
before us.

Jean Paul ignored the outburst.

“It’s not that kind of talk,” he said gravely. “I wanted to explain
what Azrael really is, and then if that doesn’t weird you out too much, I’ve
got an important question to ask…”

Ten minutes—and 800 years—later, Jean Paul concluded his story.

“So when my father died, Azrael
emerged just like always. I didn’t want to be an assassin, tried to
‘buck the system.’”

“You’re the first person ever to laugh at that joke,” he said with a
pleased timidity.

“I know a thing or two about fathers and the family business, remember?”
she reminded him with a grin.

Jean Paul smiled back even though she couldn’t see it under his helmet.
She really was a kindred spirit. Maybe, just maybe, this could work out
after all.

“Anyway, everybody knows the next part. I tried standing in for Batman,
and the bat mantle and the System didn’t exactly mesh. But that’s when
Azrael started to seem like something ‘different’ from me, separate… Back
then it was an actual apparition, in the armor, talked like my father.
I know that sounds really nuts… I guess it kinda was.”

He grew quiet and waited for some kind of response.

None came.

Within his head, Azrael had gone quiet as well, and Jean Paul had never
felt quite so alone.

“Anyway, after, y’know, Batman, I thought of Az as a, a kind of program,
bunch of mandates and psychological conditioning, all programmed into my
head. But then little over a year ago, I started to see it
differently. He likes different movies than I do, different pizza
toppings, even different video games. He’s not a program, he’s more like a
person… that just happens to live in my head.”

“I see,” Helena said carefully.

“No, you don’t. I know I sound crazy. But the fact is, Az is
a separate person—and we both like you. And, well, we kinda need you
to choose.”

“Choose?”

“Who you want to be with.”

“Be… with,” she repeated.

“Yeah. Like to date ‘n’ stuff.”

“You mean fucking,” she said flatly.

“Uh, that too,” Jean Paul squeaked.

“Okay, well, I’m going to think this over and I’ll get back to you,”
Helena answered sweetly.

Helena sucked in her cheeks, squelching the impulse to deny she was
breaking off the affair.

“Goodbye, Jean Paul,” she said
graciously. “It was a good night, and I, I’m glad I got to know
you.”

Jean Paul turned to go, and then Azrael turned back.

“I too found it a privilege and delight to know a woman of such estimable
quality,” he pronounced grandly.

“How… nice?” Helena managed as he took her hand and bowed over it
formally.

Again he turned to go.

“That man leaving the club,” Huntress announced suddenly, “He has the
same tattoo as my student.”

Azrael returned to her side and peered off the edge of the roof.
There was a faint whirring sound as the lenses in his helmet changed focus.

“A skull warrior bent over the body of
a vampire courtesan, it is the Kult der Schwarzen Freiheit, but they
were dissolved centuries ago and their mark has not been seen since.”

“Well, kids will do all kinds of sophisticated research for their own
purposes,” Huntress explained drawing on Helena’s classroom expertise. “It’s
only if you try and drill the Treaty of Paris into their heads that you
can’t get them to read five pages.”

“Yeah, but if they’ve been gone for
centuries,” Jean Paul pointed out, “then it’s not something you could
just Google.”

“You never know what turns up in Wikipedia,” Helena mentioned,
“Especially if it’s mentioned in a comic book or something.”

“Let us confront the individual that wears the mark and compel him to
tell us where he got his tattoo,” Azrael began, then shifted tone. “Or
maybe it’d be faster if you ask him, nicely, y’know. Beautiful woman
goes up to a guy and admires his ink, he’s ready to brag a bit, don’t you
think?”